This is what happens

I should know better than to play games with myself. This morning I formalized my "rule of five" simplified cooking idea. This evening I'm trying to wiggle around it.

For tonight's meal I slowly cooked garlic, carrots, celery, and onion with ground meat (pork and beef) and a big pinch of salt until the meat was no longer pink. To this I added black pepper, sliced dried chipotles and some ground pasilla chili. After stirring well I mixed in some creme fraiche and a bit of water. This cooked, covered over low heat, for an hour before we ate it.

As a side I steamed some potatoes, drained them, and crushed them lightly with some coarse salt and butter.

Great food, but clearly violating the five-ingredient rule, right? There are 8 ingredients above. But! (here's where the games start) The carrots, celery, onion combination is mirepoix. So really I only used garlic, mirepoix, ground meat, chipotle, pasilla, and creme fraiche. Only 6 ingredients! I was thinking of doing it as the "rule of six" anyway! Really! 

Anyway, there were other things I almost added (cumin, coriander, mexican oregano, paprika, bouillon, soy sauce, etc.) but I skipped because of the game, so there was at least some simplification.

Of course we had a green salad.